A Holistic Approach to Happiness

Leonardo Lightbourne

Abstract

In the United States and Great Britain happiness has declined during the last quarter of the century (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004). This suggests that individual and societal happiness may not be attributable to material well-being and may affected by other factors. Previous studies have failed to adopt a holistic approach towards happiness that incorporates material, physical, social and psychological factors, and the spiritual or transpersonal dimension of being (Egan et al., 2014; Graham et al., 2017). This study aims to explore happiness in a holistic way by including measures of well-being, spiritual well-being, personality, self-actualization, self-esteem and the experiencing of weird coincidences. 126 participants completed a survey online via Survey Monkey. Well-being(PERMA) and self-actualization were significantly positively related with overall happiness. Based on our findings, personal happiness may not be attributable to material well-being and may affected by factors such as meaning and self-esteem. Future research might look at whether seeking meaning or having found meaning or both are associated with self-actualization